Single Girl Society: Maybe You Had It Right At 15

Taylor Swift has built a career off of perfectly explaining those moments where you look at someone and just know — the way their hair falls, the way they look at you, the way the environment just seems to envelope you, the feeling that you could live in that moment forever. And as much as we grind our teeth at such cliché and cheese-tastic moments, we can’t help but hope that there’s one in our near future. So what if listening to Taylor Swift makes you feel like you’re 15 again? Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s not a lot I remember liking at 15, certainly not having my mom drop me off at the mall where I could buy Wonderbras and matching tube tops with my five best friends. And I definitely wouldn’t want to go back to the high school hallways, with my locker not so conveniently located next to the cheerleaders’ hangout spot in between classes, watching them smack and twirl their Bubble Yum and flirt with whatever football player played well that week.

But I have to admit, there were some great things about being 15, like the way you felt when “Slide” by the Goo Goo Dolls came on (because there’s nothing like a subpar to mediocre ’90s soft rock song to make you want to fall in love). Not too long ago, love was the most important thing on my mind and just six years later, I can’t imagine having love on my mind as much as I did then. Frankly, it sounds exhausting and that’s saying a lot…since I am, after all, a dating blogger.

Those older and wiser than me would laugh at the way my feelings shifted in the last six years, saying that if I’ve got no right to sound so jaded at 21. I agree with them. It’s crazy to sound jaded at my ripe 21 years, but the world is moving faster than ever and young adults are not just keeping up, they’re leading the way. If everyone is growing up faster and faster than it makes sense to endure some wear and tear at an earlier age.

If you’re anything like me, you want nothing to do with your 15-year-old self’s fashion sense, but maybe it’s time we take note from the part of ourselves that loved to feel. Back then a date was more than a few texts and a potentially awkward dinner; it was an opportunity to feel, not just love, but excitement and butterflies. Dating in college can get kind of routine and over the years, we lose that luster as we find out that the trend is that you have more mediocre dates than spectacular ones and that most of the time, you’re not “on a date” so much as you’re “just hangin’ out.”

The trick is to pick out the great moments from your life at 15. While you’ve got to consider all of the lessons you’ve learned since then, you should also remember that being 15 and green to the dating world gave you the advantage of diving in and really investing your heart in a relationship or person. While it can be tough to balance that willingness to feel with the heartbreak you’ve already racked up and your need to be independent, it can be ultimately rewarding. That doesn’t mean you have to forgo your single life to hunt down love and by no means am I suggesting that you need to fall in love to be happy but at the same time, don’t block it. Being willing to open up emotionally does not make you dependent on love — it makes you human.